Blog #11: IPCC Identifies Anthropogenic Emissions as a Cause of Climate Change

November 18th, 2011

2:34 P.M.

In a freshly released statement by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there was a claim that stated that it was very likely that emissions from human activity have led to the increase in daily temperature maximums around the world. According to the summary that was released today by the IPCC; “There have been statistically significant trends in the number of heavy precipitation events in some regions,” as well as a statement on the possibility of hurricane pattern change that said: "Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase, although increases may not occur in all ocean basins. It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged." To back this claim up, the BBC references a study published in 2009 that showed that hurricanes in the northern Atlantic Ocean had occurred more frequently in 2009 than any time in the past 1,000 years.

It will be interesting to see how the world responds to this study. More directly, it will be interesting to see the response from the United States and China, the world’s top polluting countries. So far, both of these polluting giants have done quite poorly at the task of addressing climate change, and promoting their citizen’s involvement in correcting it. Though China has at least admitted the problem is a present concern. This United States mindset of ignoring the situation cannot continue any longer without our weather systems becoming more extreme and potentially damaging societies the world over. We need to start addressing the problem of emissions here at home, because America is the largest polluter in the world, and we should be setting the example for the rest of the world. However, we have refused to give the climate change issue the consideration of being a political social problem, because we as a nation have not accepted that it is a problem. We have ignored it because of the predominance of economics in our current mindset. Perhaps if climate change begins to affect the quality of life of people in the United States, something might finally be done about it. I only hope it’s not too late by that point.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15745408

IPCC’s summary:

http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-SPM_Approved-HiRes_opt.pdf